Head of the class: URI quantum physics students work as teaching assistants for Brookhaven National Laboratory

Multiple URI students, including quantum computing master’s student Matt Sarsam, of Cleveland, Ohio, and Luke Ellert-Beck, a fifth-year Ph.D. physics student from Dubuque, Iowa, have helped mentor other collegiate minds in quantum physics at the prominent physics lab.

“Our students have reported accelerated learning through the course work and their work as teaching assistants,” Kahn said.

Both Sarsam and Ellert-Beck became Brookhaven teaching assistants without taking the QIS101 course as students, utilizing the knowledge they obtained in URI’s quantum programs to share with other top quantum students taking QIS101.

Ellert-Beck enjoyed helping students simplify information and key points from QIS101’s lengthy lectures so that students could grasp quantum physics and computing more easily.

Seeing the Brookhaven students’ excited reactions after gaining that understanding, especially on more advanced topics, was fulfilling, he said.